Tynedalesman - Members Jottings

Health and Safety
By Dr Liesel von Metz

You can just picture the scene. It was a lovely sunny day during the week after the Easter hols, and there I was sat contentedly in the Signalbox at Alston. Ahhhh, I thought, this is the life...... birds singing, daffodils looking cheerful below and the sunshine streaming in through the windows.

Suddenly my reverie was interrupted..... our Treasurer comes up the stairs and into the �box........ �errrr. . ... I wondered if you'd be able to do a health and safety article for Tynedalesman?� he ventured. Dang. I had clean forgotten that Mike, like many of us, has more than one hat and helps put Tynedalesman magazine together.

Never mind, I figured I�d better give it a go. After all, I sat in the Editor�s seat myself for a while and well remember that sinking feeling when it�s a week past copy date and all you have is a couple of one-sided articles and a few pictures.... So what to say about �health and safety?�

Well, I suppose I could quote statistics at you to impress you at how important it is - the 212 people killed at work last year, the 28,605 serious injuries, the estimated 6,000 or so occupational cancer deaths every year and so on. But, whilst important, perhaps that is missing an important aspect of what we term loosely �health and safety.�

It�s funny, but these days �health and safety� has become almost aterm of abuse. If a school trip is cancelled - �health and safety� is blamed. Someone doesn�t want to do a job - �oh no, I can�t do that guv, health and safety reasons.� And so it goes on, the Daily Mail newspaper moans about killjoys and the very real benefits that our society has achieved from �health and safety�, particularly the workers themselves who agitated for much-needed protection via their Trades Unions over the years, are forgotten.

So what is this �health and safety� stuff really about then?

I guess on a very basic level, it�s an expression of our belief as a society through our legal framework that in general it is not morally right to expect a person to forfeit their life doing a job of work - death is not an �occupational hazard.� This being founded in the concept that people are not disposable objects and have a basic right to dignity and reflected in the common-law foundation of civil law as an expression of the (moral) rights and duties of individuals towards each other.

Whilst �health and safety� can seem bureaucratic or just plain awkward to some - after all, it's bit of a bummer if someone points out a slight flaw (i.e. that could kill someone) in your master plan - I don�t think any of us would like to work in the conditions that were present during our �glory empire� days at the turn of the last century. Nor do I think any of us would volunteer to work in the conditions highlighted recently in a BBC World Service programme about bonded (i.e. slave) labourers in India, labouring in quarries to produce granite for cheap kitchen worktops here in the West. Which is why I tend to get a little tetchy when someone on the South Tynedale Railway wants to do something which is these days regarded as potentially hazardous because �BR (British Rail) did it this way....� Or �it�s authentic.�

Yeah, well, BR (British Rail) did lots of things in its steam days we would consider reprehensible today. Anyone volunteering for lagging a boiler with loose blue asbestos without any masks being provided? No? Don�t fancy dying of cancer in a good cause then do you - it�s authentic after all. What about ashing out the old-fashioned way - what, don�t you like standing ankle deep in hot coals?

Or going further back, how about six days of 12-hour shifts? No? Where�s your staying power man!

The point is, it has been �health and safety� legislation that has outlawed both these sorts of practises - and the cultural mindset that leads to them. Being provided with decent protective equipment, being entitled to reasonable breaks, having a basic assumption that the health of workers will not be damaged by their work - all of these things were fought hard for by Union activists and philanthropists for over a century. Yet, like our right to vote, we all - too soon, forget this when living in a society with laws that protect and shelter us, and wow, we do at times actually have to stop, think and sometimes fill in a form.

Indeed, I believe that the Health and Safety at Work (etc.) Act 1974 (which still underpins our Health and Safety systems today) was as revolutionary in its way as the Equal Franchise Act, that finally gave all adults the vote in 1928. In both cases, the Acts consolidated and consummated a long process of reform, based on the simple concept that we are all equal human beings with a right to be treated with basic decency.

Which brings me around to another point. My comparison of �health and safety� legislation to the universal franchise isn�t entirely coincidental. So often, I get complaints about the way in which our modern context of liabilities and a risk-averse public means we have to implement �safe systems of working� in what some perceive as a �belt and braces� manner. Well, I have a stock answer to this: I don�t make the laws - I just work out how we should apply them in the required proportionate way. If you want to change the law - remember, thanks to our more interested grandparents and great-grandparents, this is a Parliamentary democracy and you get the chance to cast your vote on a regular basis - you did actually bother to vote this time round now, didn�t you...?

Don�t get me wrong, I�m not an advocate of unnecessary paperwork nor of petty-minded officials building empires. However, I also believe that the whole concept of �health and safety� has, like democracy itself, to some extent been given a bad reputation by just such people who do not really understand how to apply the regulations in a proportionate way, or by those who use it as an excuse to cover up a hidden agenda.

So, next time you head out to work on the train, or kiss either your husband, wife or child goodbye as they go to work, or come up to Alston to volunteer on the Railway, remember: the fact you can reasonably expect yourself or your loved one to come home that night alive and in good health is due in a large part to that old ogre we criticise so much, �Health and Safety�.

Maybe it isn�t such a bad deal after all...?

Click here to return to the top of this page.

For more information about the South Tynedale Railway, please contact:-

THE SOUTH TYNEDALE RAILWAY PRESERVATION SOCIETY,
Registered Office Address:-
The Railway Station, Alston, Cumbria, CA9 3JB.
Telephone 01434 381696.
Talking timetable - Telephone 01434 382828.
Registered Charity No. 514939.
Limited by Guarantee: Company Registration No. 1850832 (England).

E-mail enquiries - please click on links below:
South Tynedale Railway information - Send e-mail to South Tynedale Railway
STRPS membership information only - Send e-mail to Kathy Aveyard
Tynedalesman information only - Send e-mail to Tynedalesman compilers

Mission Statement for the South Tynedale Railway:-
�To provide satisfaction for our customers and volunteers
by operating a friendly, safe and efficient narrow-gauge railway.�

� South Tynedale Railway Preservation Society, June 2007.

More great reads